In The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, the author shows the racial struggle between blacks and whites in the 60s, during the Civil Right movement. The main black characters, Roseleen, August, May, June and Zach face a lot of difficulties as blacks; for instance, Roseleen was having a hard time to get the right to vote, June has a sense of intimidation towards white and May’s suicide is indirectly connected to the racial problem. Moreover, when Roseleen was just walking on the street, some Caucasian men pick a fight with her and then they beat her up until she almost dies. On the other hand, the main white characters, Lily and her father T. Ray, are racist. We can see how racism is influential when it comes to parents to child, and we …show more content…
On Socialist Worker, the author Alex Taylor mentions that Marxist writer CLR James points out about the beginning of the racism and he says, “The conception of dividing people by race begins with the slave trade . . . that the only justification by which humanity could face it was to divide people into races and decide that the Africans were an inferior race." (Taylor). Taylor also mentions that people never thought racism as something powerful enough to pressure someone before an occurrence of capitalism. Dr. Dass - Brailsford states the cause of racism; “People become racist due to an environment that they grow up, [and] that’s how a belief gets constructed, [which means we] develop attitudes and stereotypes from socialization. (qtd in Gregoire). Therefore, everything that surrounding us such as family, neighbor, and friends is reflecting and also creating our thoughts. Another possible cause is the media. Mass media includes mainly TV, newspaper, social network service and it has a huge power to dominate people. Due to the fact that most of the young generation uses social network service, media are also part of our life. According Professor Stephen Balkaran at Yale University, “media perpetuate racial stereotypes by linking young African-American males as gangsters or drug dealers . . . [and also] the media have focused on the negative …show more content…
Joe R Feagin states his idea in the book Racism America, “every part of life cycle, and most aspects of one’s life, are shaped by racism that is integral to the foundation of the United States” ( 2 ). According to The New York Times, the research have found that blacks often got wrong diagnoses more than whites, school administrators treat blacks more strict and police arrest blacks much more often than whites. In addition to the effect, even a company judge and choose résumés by common white-sounding name or black-sounding name (Kristof). These factors make us realize racial inequality makes an actual difference in social status. According to Charlene Crowell in The Louisiana weekly, the gap between black family median income and white family median income had narrowed $48.106 to $28.000 in past two decades, but significant racial income gap is still exist in our society (Crowell). And when the wage gap is growing, it influence on education, health and crime rate like a negative chain. Urban Institute declares, “higher education gap between black and white is larger today than 50 years ago”. He also mentions this is because the quality of school and school financing system. Rich white who live around school pay a lot of tax and it supporting higher school fee, therefore, it makes a difference in achievement gap afterwards (Nochols). We can say families with low income tend to have